World
How Dubai Police Busted And Stopped $1B Worth Of Drugs From Being Smuggled In
The Dubai Police said it arrested six people who were part of an “international criminal cartel,” in what it said was “one of the largest smuggling operations of captagon tablets in the world.”
The pills were hidden using “innovative smuggling methods,” concealed within 432 pieces of high-end furniture panels and 651 professionally crafted doors made from iron and wood, the interior ministry said, adding that extracting the tablets took “days.”
The UAE “stands as an impenetrable fortress against any threat aimed at jeopardizing the security and well-being of the Emirati society,” Interior Minister Sheikh Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan said in a statement on Twitter on Thursday.
A surveillance video shared by the interior ministry on Thursday shows the suspects attempting to bring the captagon tablets through Dubai’s Jebel Ali Port.
UAE authorities have seized hundreds of thousands of captagon pills since 2019. In June of this year, the Abu Dhabi Customs said it had seized nearly 175,000 pills between the start of 2019 and May this year.
Captagon was originally the brand name for a medicinal product containing the synthetic stimulant fenethylline. Though it is no longer produced legally, counterfeit drugs carrying the captagon name are regularly seized in the Middle East, according to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction.
Experts say the vast majority of global captagon production occurs in Syria, with the Gulf region being its primary destination.
The growth of the industry has raised alarms in the international community. Last year, the US introduced the 2022 US Captagon Act, which linked the trade to the Syrian regime and called it a “transnational security threat.”
Kenya Insights allows guest blogging, if you want to be published on Kenya’s most authoritative and accurate blog, have an expose, news TIPS, story angles, human interest stories, drop us an email on [email protected] or via Telegram
Kenyan player wins a Ksh3.2 million jackpot
IEBC Sets August 10 Date For 2027 General Election
Furious Ruto Lashes Out at Gideon Moi Over Repeated ‘Blackmail, Extortionist’ Headlines on The Standard and KTN
Mombasa Gripped by ‘Male Organ Theft’ Panic as Social Media Fuels Mob Attacks and Fear
TOO MUCH PR, NOTHING TO SEE: How Gladys Wanga Built a Perfect Story of Transformation While Homa Bay Bled
Netanyahu Says Israel Must ‘Break Free from Dependence’ After Tensions With Trump Administration
Niger pulls Out Of International Criminal Court After Calling It Neo-Colonialist
Kenya Awards Sh154 Billion JKIA Upgrade Tender To Chinese Firm CRBC
The Untouchable: How KURA’s Silas Kinoti Has Survived A Decade Of Corruption Storms While Kenya’s Roads Bled
Fake Papers, Dirty Millions And The Analo Connect: How Kitisuru MCA Alvin Palapala Built a Shadow Empire Inside Nairobi’s Planning Machine
Businessman Philip Waithaka Kinuthia’s Minor Son Allegedly Drove Drunk, Killed Two Peponi Students in Ngong Road Horror Crash as Claims of Cover-Up Intensify
Inside NCBA’s Decline: How a Banking Giant Lost Its Strategic Edge
South Sudan: Adut Salva Kiir’s Shadow Treasury Exposed
Cement, Cash and Courts: How the Hashu Dynasty Crushed the Ramji Brothers for Fourteen Years and Why the Walls Are Now Closing In
Standard Chartered Ghosts Haunt Joshua Oigara At Stanbic As Whistleblower Spills Beans
Inside The Urban Planning Cartel That Owns Nairobi
THE VULTURE AND THE SCHEME How Nairobi West Hospital Became the Most Dangerous Institution in Kenya’s SHA Ecosystem and Why the Books Must Be Audited Now
The President’s Daughter and The Missing Witness: How Adut Salva Kiir’s Shadow Treasury Silenced Its Most Dangerous Critic
How Adil Popat Saved His Empire On The Eve Of Imperial Bank Collapse and Why Kenya’s Mainstream Media Buried The Story
Why John Ngumi Is Running From the EACC and Why the Sh415 Million Payday May Be the Least of His Worries
-
News1 week agoBusinessman Philip Waithaka Kinuthia’s Minor Son Allegedly Drove Drunk, Killed Two Peponi Students in Ngong Road Horror Crash as Claims of Cover-Up Intensify
-
Africa2 weeks agoSouth Sudan: Adut Salva Kiir’s Shadow Treasury Exposed
-
Business2 weeks agoStandard Chartered Ghosts Haunt Joshua Oigara At Stanbic As Whistleblower Spills Beans
-
Investigations6 days agoTHE VULTURE AND THE SCHEME How Nairobi West Hospital Became the Most Dangerous Institution in Kenya’s SHA Ecosystem and Why the Books Must Be Audited Now
-
Africa2 weeks agoThe President’s Daughter and The Missing Witness: How Adut Salva Kiir’s Shadow Treasury Silenced Its Most Dangerous Critic
-
Business2 weeks agoHow Adil Popat Saved His Empire On The Eve Of Imperial Bank Collapse and Why Kenya’s Mainstream Media Buried The Story
-
Business2 weeks agoWhy John Ngumi Is Running From the EACC and Why the Sh415 Million Payday May Be the Least of His Worries
-
Business6 days agoInside the Billion-Shilling Betrayal: How Senior Treasury Officials Plundered a UN Poverty Fund and Built a Real Estate Empire on the Backs of Kenya’s Rural Poor